Showing Post From Performance
Embedded key-value stores in 2026: revisit RocksDB, LMDB and Pebble before you build another storage layer
Sooner or later, every backend team meets a problem that looks too small for a database server and too big for a JSON file.
Read moreHTTP caching in 2026: revisit Varnish and Vinyl Cache, Apache Traffic Server and NGINX before you put another cache in front of your app
Most teams add an HTTP cache on a bad day. The home page is slow during a traffic spike, the database is at 100% CPU, and somebody says “let us just put Varnish in front”.
Read moreAI gateways in 2026: revisit LiteLLM, Bifrost and Agent Router before you put another model API key in application code
Most teams did not plan their first AI gateway. It arrived as a side effect. One service called a hosted model with a key from an environment variable.
Read moreGraph databases in 2026: revisit Neo4j Community, Memgraph and Apache AGE before you model another relationship in SQL joins
Most teams do not decide to adopt a graph database. They arrive at it through a query. Somebody asks “which customers are connected to that blocked customer through a shared phone number, bank account or address?
Read moreWeb application firewalls in 2026: revisit ModSecurity, OWASP Coraza and BunkerWeb before you put another WAF in front of your app
A web application firewall is one of those things that gets added after a bad week. A penetration test report arrives, or a customer sends a security questionnaire with a line that says “Do you use a WAF?
Read moreReverse proxies in 2026: revisit NGINX, Caddy and HAProxy before you put another proxy in front of your app
Almost every web application we run has something sitting in front of it. A few virtual machines run the actual code, and one or two small servers in front of them accept HTTPS, keep certificates, spread traffic, hide a dead backend and write the access log.
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